As they head toward the clubhouse, chattering like magpies, Mason falls into step beside me.
"She's good for them," he says quietly, his teenage voice trying for casualness and missing.
"Yeah.She is."
"For you too, I think."
I look down at him, surprised by the observation."What makes you say that?"
Mason shrugs, suddenly looking every one of his sixteen years."You smile differently when she's around.Like you remember how."
I laugh it off, but the truth of it lodges under my ribs.Fuck.When did I forget how to smile?He jogs ahead to catch up with his siblings, leaving me standing alone in the parking lot with the kid's words echoing in my head.
"This is dangerous territory, brother."
Tempest's voice makes me jump.I hadn't heard him approach.
"So you keep saying."
"Because it's true.That woman in there, she's not some club girl looking for a good time.She's the kind of woman who makes you want things you can't have."
"Can't have, or shouldn't have?"
"Both."Tempest’s expression darkens, more memory than warning."I fell for a girl like her once.I thought I could handle it.She left the second things got hard.Took pieces of me with her."
He shakes his head."This life...it asks for more than most people know how to give."
"She's stronger than you think," I say, maybe more to convince myself.
"Maybe.But are you strong enough to let her go if that's what's best for her?"
The question hits like a blade between the ribs, because he's asking the one thing I don't want to examine too closely.
What if I'm not good for her?What if everything Ethan said was right, and I'm just a dangerous distraction that's going to ruin her life?
What if the smart thing, the right thing, is to keep my distance?
But then I hear her laugh from inside the clubhouse, see her through the window as she settles Lily on her lap for story time, and I know I'm already too far gone to make rational decisions.
She called me an angel once, years ago at a family barbecue when she'd had too much wine and was feeling sentimental.I'd been helping Calla in the kitchen when Evangeline wandered in, already engaged to Ethan but looking at me like I was something special.
"You're like Calla's guardian angel," she'd said, her voice soft with emotion."Always protecting her, always watching out for her."
I'd laughed it off, made some joke about angels not wearing leather cuts.But the way she looked at me when she said it, like I was something more than just a criminal with good intentions, had stayed with me.
Now, watching her through the window as she reads to the children, I find myself whispering the nickname I've never had the courage to say out loud.
"Angel."
"What did you say?"Tempest asks.
"Nothing.Just...nothing."
But as I watch Evangeline kiss the top of Lily's head, as I see the love and fierce protectiveness in her eyes when she looks at those kids, I know I'm lying to myself.
This isn't nothing.
This is everything.
